Category Archives: Editing

I subscribe to the Writing World newsletter via email. While catching up on issues I haven’t had a chance to read, I came across this article by Moira Allen. It’s very relevant to my current situation with Tunerville.

The only exception here is that my first draft experience sucked dog doo. I enjoyed writing Rose’s Hostage; not so with Tunerville. On everything else, though, Moira nails it.

Coffee on the Deck – by Moira Allen

January 24, 2013: Do You, Author, Take This Novel….?

It should be fairly evident to anyone who has been following my editorials that I’ve been having just the teensiest bit of difficulty getting to the second draft of my novel.

I’ve found this reluctance a bit of a surprise. While I approached the first draft with a certain amount of trepidation, the experience was actually a delight. I loved writing that first draft. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed writing task quite so much. I couldn’t wait to sit down to the computer and begin the next scene. And much to my amazement, that first draft actually got finished.

And that’s where things came to a screeching halt. Oh, I said, I’ll just give myself a bit of a break, and come back fresh. Maybe a bit longer break. Maybe a sabbatical. Maybe a round-the-world cruise, followed by a lengthy quest for enlightenment at some remote monastery, and then another cruise… Suffice it to say that time has passed, copious amounts of water have flowed under bridges, and the second draft is no closer to being begun.

Now we stand on the brink of yet another New Year, with that first-of-the-year urge to set goals and tackle the important stuff, and I’m asking myself… why? What is it about a Second Draft that makes it such a different, and more intimidating, prospect than the first?

And then it came to me. The first draft was romance. The second draft is marriage.

The first draft was a dance of delight without commitment. Put simply, I could enjoy the relationship without worrying about whether or not I could actually make it work. One of the mind-games I played was the classic “It’s a first draft, it doesn’t have to be good.” The words don’t have to be right. The rhythm doesn’t have to be perfect. Plot holes can be filled in later. Research gaps can be noted and attended to in the future. We’re just having fun together, my novel and I, spending time together and seeing where it goes without worrying obsessively about whether it’s going “in the right direction.”

But now, it’s time to ask harder questions. Tackling a second draft is not just a stroll in the park. It’s a commitment. One can no longer get away with saying, “The little things don’t matter.” In a second draft, they do matter. One can’t say, “Hey, I don’t have to worry about making it work” — because making it work is the whole point of a second draft.

Nor is it just a commitment to “hard work.” If hard work scared us away from writing, we’d never get anything done. There are lots of writing tasks one can undertake that involve every bit as much work as a novel, but nowhere near the amount of commitment. Because the commitment isn’t just about effort. It’s about emotion.

Writing a novel is, in many ways, a process of embarking upon and committing to a relationship. A novel is something you’re going to spend time with — a lot of time with. It’s going to consume hours of your waking life. Even when you’re not working on it, you’ll be thinking about it, worrying about it, perhaps even having conversations with your characters in your head. You’ll know more about the lives of your characters than you may know about some of your own relatives. When things are going well, you’ll wonder if they’re really going well, or if you’re just deceiving yourself. When they aren’t — well, stock up on the chocolate ice cream!

It is an emotional commitment. It raises doubts, fears, concerns. Is this the right book to commit to? Is this really something I want to dedicate the next X months or years of my life to? Do I have what it takes to make this work? What if I don’t have what it takes to make it work?

Like any relationship, we come to it with hopes, expectations, and dreams. A novel isn’t just a certain number of words. It’s words into which we have invested our hearts — and we hope that investment will “pay off.” We want that novel to be a success. We want others to read it and fall in love with it, just as we’ve fallen in love. We don’t want it to end up on the remainder shelf, or worse, never make it to the top of the slush pile. And if the relationship doesn’t “work out,” we’ll blame ourselves, and perhaps start to wonder if we have what it takes to make any novel work.

In short, a novel has a unique power: It has the power to fulfill our dreams, or break our hearts. Mere “work” alone does not have that power. Only a relationship has such power.

So if you are finding yourself shying away from a first draft, or a second draft, or a third, take heart. You’re not lazy. You’re not afraid of work. You’re afraid of commitment — and everything that a commitment means. Deep down, we realize that only by giving that relationship our all, and holding nothing back, can we truly “make it work.” It’s no small step to take.

But without taking that step, we fail before we begin. So perhaps, as we look ahead to a New Year, we need to say more than simply “I will.” We need to open our hearts, embrace our fears, and say… “i do.”

I sent Rose’s Hostage to horror writer Brian Keene, who is doing critiques for money.

Yes, it’s perfectly fine for published authors to do this. Writing books doesn’t pay very well—just scroll to the bottom and check out the link to his post on what being a full-time writer is REALLY like. But we write because we have to, not because we can.

Brian’s one guy, and he doesn’t do this all the time, because you know, he has his own work to do. He offered it last year, and I was unable to partake. Thanks, unemployment. This time, it coincided with my first full paycheck from NewJob. Yay!

I pulled another 1,000 words out of the sucker and chopped up some of the chapters before I sent it. Many of them were too long. I’ve been reading more lately, as per my New Year’s resolution. While I read, I notice stuff, like word choices (I can’t stop editing in my head, or headiting—it’s really kind of annoying), chapter length, and crap like that.

Anyway, if you’re a writer, horror or not, you could do worse than to read Brian’s stuff. He’s good. I respect his opinion, and I’m both elated and terrified as I anticipate receiving my undoubtedly heavily red-inked manuscript back. Dear Baby Jesus, please let him like it.

Okay, shameless plugs aside, hanging out with other writers and getting them to look at your work, even if they charge for their expertise –WHICH THEY SHOULD!!!—is a valuable thing. Certainly worth more than the Samsung Galaxy S II I was planning on buying instead.

No matter what dear Mr. Keene says about my book, there will be lessons I can carry forward. I’m doing the first rewrite of my new novel right now (well, not right this second—I’m probably going to watch a few episodes of Red Dwarf tonight. Yeah, I’m into that now. Thanks again, Netflix.) First thing would be to shut off the damn streaming and work. The inner boss is much harsher than the outer one.

Speaking of it, I promised you a little more information about NewBook, and here it is. It’s called Tunerville, and it has something to do with the paranormal. No, there are no vampires. One of the main characters does something that turns the world upside down. I hope I can get it up to snuff so you can read it someday.

I’m still not ready to reveal my hook just yet; as I said in an earlier post, a lot of changes could happen, especially in this first rewrite. I don’t want to get you all excited and then drop you like an old shoe. That wouldn’t be fair. By the time the Blogging from A-Z Challenge rolls around, I should be farther along. So stay tuned.

I will say this: my first rewrite is reminding me how much I really like this part of writing. First drafts can be fun if they flow like Rose’s Hostage did, but Tunerville was a real bitch-kitty. Let’s hope the rest of the process is a bit easier.

And there is some material in there that will, if it gets published, undoubtedly brand me a heretic and a heathen. Bring it on. As Robin Williams once said, God has a sense of humor—just look at a platypus.

Okay, I’m going now. Two hours of skating this morning and two lessons froze my brain as well as my feet. See you around.

I’ll leave you with a fabulous song from The Hobbit, which I have chosen for my Adult Bronze test program. Enjoy.

Related articles

Yep, and it’s writing/editing related! I’ll be proofing reports for a local company, along with various administrative duties. I’m pretty excited about it. It seems like a very cool place to work.

Sorry for the long delay in posting. I had to rest my brain after NaNoWriMo. The space between when I finish and when I can stand to even look at NewBook has been larger than it was for Rose’s Hostage.

There’s a lot to do, and I promised I would share that process with you. I’ll start with these remarks about setting.

Whether your story takes place in a village, a city or on another planet, your setting has its own identity that may or may not be wrapped up in that of your protagonist. The right name and some attention to its population, geography and infrastructure provide valuable backstory that will give your place depth and realism, even if you don’t use all the material.

The sounds of the words can tell you something about your setting. Consider J.R.R. Tolkien‘s hobbits, who live in Hobbiton, the Shire. Tolkien’s place names are representative of the folks living in them. Shire sounds pastoral, peaceful, like the hobbits themselves.

Gondor sounds mighty, as its warrior Boromir was before the Ring tragically unmasked his failings. And Mordor—the name alone is enough to conjure writhing black spirits in one’s mind.

Batman’s stomping grounds are based on New York, a city that can be dark and looming, although Chris Nolan’s movies are filmed in Chicago. Gotham, which was a nickname for the Big Apple long before Batman came to be, sounds metropolitan but also gothic in a broody way. Considering Batman’s tragic origin, it fits. Metropolis (hello, Captain Obvious) is the bustling city where Superman hangs out.

Sometimes writers use real places in their work, especially ones with which they are very familiar. Tons of movies and books are set in New York City. . In Betty Smith’s classic A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the borough itself is as much a character as the protagonist.

I prefer to make up settings. Unless I know a place very, very well, I’m liable to get it wrong. If one of my books happened in Los Angeles, I would have to either do a great deal of research (which sucks – I set something in Spain once and know NOTHING about it) or travel there to get it right (Ha! Not likely with my bank account!).

Rose’s Hostage is set in a fictional city in Illinois called Ralston. Yes, like the cereal. To me, it sounded Midwestern, solid, slightly industrial. I picture a drive into it as close to entering St. Louis–not as factory-infested as Joliet, with rural satellite communities like my small city. To make it interesting and keep my detective busy, I added:

A self-contained rough area downtown, like the Narrows in Gotham City, with lots and lots of bars and hookers.

Federal law enforcement and an entrenched Mafia presence.

Motorcycle gangs. Both they and the Mafia are augmented by a reasonable proximity to Chicago, which I can mine for all sorts of criminal goodies.

Lots of public areas—parks, a museum, etc. where disaster-ish stuff could happen.

Thinking about where Ralston is, who lives there and what kind of activity they would engage in made a difference in all sorts of details. The population is mostly descended from Western European immigrants, which affects what names I choose for people. All this comes together in a flavor for the area.

Most of the places in NewBook are grounded in reality. Some are speculative. There are several places where the story happens:

Martinsburg (working title)—a nice, middle-sized city, nothing huge, smaller than Ralston, but not rural. It’s home to a prestigious university that has spawned a pretty good scientific community, central to some elements of the story.

There are larger social ramifications to the protagonist’s actions, but I simply could not expand the scope of my settings and still manage the story. So I’m condensing the majority of it down to Martinsburg. I’m not sharing just yet because so many things still need work that what I say now may be completely different in a month or two.

Keep an eye out for April’s Blogging from A-Z Challenge. I’m planning yet again to participate, with more enticing tidbits about how my book is coming together.

NewBook’s settings are still mostly in my head. It seems kind of back-assward to write them down now, but this book has not followed my usual process, so don’t take it as gospel on how to work. For most of us, it’s worthwhile to take time and plot your setting before you put your characters there.

A horde is a large group. A hoard is an accumulation. ”But,” you cry, “the definitions are similar!” Tricky? Yes, except a hoard can be small.

Teh vs. the

In LOLcat speak, teh is usually deliberate. The email to your boss is not LOLcat speak. Often this error is a typo that careful proofreading would have caught. I see it more in blog posts and comments.

Unless texting your BFF, write it out! The more you get in the habit of writing carefully and properly, the better your overall presentation will be. Save the textspeak for casual encounters. Or just learn to type faster.

Bare vs. bear

(Naked vs. a large carnivorous land mammal)

I hate this one.

The pain was more than I could bare.

Don’t wear shoulder-bearing shirts in the office.

Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear (not a bare). Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he?

When your name goes on that article, you want it to be your best work, right? Even if you’re posting anonymously, your online writing represents you, in comments, posts, and even tweets. Take a little time to check words you’re not sure of.

I’m far from perfect, and if you spot a mistake in one of my posts, please let me know in the comments. They come to me in email, so I’ll see it. I’ll gladly correct it, publish your rebuttal to something I said (following my Comment Policy, of course), or change it if needed.

Remember that story by Stephen King, “Secret Window, Secret Garden?” They made a film out of it with Johnny Depp, called merely Secret Window. In the film/story, a writer is approached by a hayseed who hurtles the accusation at him, “You stole my story!”

I don’t want to read unpublished work, possibly be influenced by it, and then end up in court because you levied this accusation at me, even though my story has nothing to do with yours. Or because I used the same theme, like first love, but not the same plot, that of your fictional first time with a young Bruce Wayne, in Alfred’s room while he was at the grocery store.

First readers are great. They look at your stuff, and point out mistakes, inconsistencies, awkward turns of phrase, and other beasts that infest your writing. You will be blind to these while you birth your masterpiece.

Truth is, no one, NO ONE, writes a perfect first draft. Depending on the writer or the work, it may take several edits before it’s ready for someone else’s discerning gaze. If you think your first draft is perfect, I challenge you to sit on it for a month and then go back and read it again.

If I read your work, I will feel compelled to point out the places where it could use some improvement. I’m no expert, far from it. But I know enough to help you with the big clunkers.

And that’s what it is: help. I don’t do it because I don’t want to listen to you whine, or yell at me, if I make suggestions. Learn how to take constructive criticism (I really prefer the term feedback). You’ll have to do this if you want to be a writer.

Not having enough time sucks

I have two blogs, and (usually) a full-time job, plus I’m supposed to be writing my own stuff. I don’t always have time to slog through your long-ass manuscript. Especially if you’re going to yell at me.

If we’re both broke and you’re at least at my level of skill and you want to barter—you read mine, I’ll read yours—I may be amenable to that.

Critiquing is work, and working for free sucks

Sorry, man, but I can’t pay my bills in thanks. If I don’t know you and you want me to give a basic critique, you’re going to have to pay me for my time. If I do know you, well you’ll still have to, although I might be able to work something out with you.

“But you don’t have a book out. You’re just an amateur writer. Why can’t you do this for the kudos?”

Because.

Unless YOUR book is coming out and you thank me profusely in the acknowledgments for helping you cross your Is and dot your Ts, the kudos aren’t going to do me a bit of good. No one will see them.

I’m not a complete amateur. Yes, my output isn’t as prolific as some other people’s, but I have actually been paid to write. If you get paid for something, you’re no longer an amateur, the definition of which is “someone who does something for the love of it.”

If I have to work for free all the time on YOUR stuff, I’m not free to do my own work, which at some point I may actually get paid for.

———–

I’m not trying to demean your efforts, really. I’m just pointing out to you that there are good reasons why many writers don’t read unpublished work. Famous ones are even less likely to do it, unless you’ve paid buttloads of money for a personalized glance-through at a conference or convention.

Writing groups are a good place to bounce your stuff off other people of a similar literary bent. They are set up with this in mind. A good group will have rules, and you’ll have to return the favor from time to time, but that will only help you learn.

Don’t you hate when you’re reading something and you come to a hugely erroneous fact? How about a gross misspelling? When a paper makes a mistake, they print a correction. When a writer makes a mistake and it gets into a published book, it’s a little more difficult to fix it.

Bloggers have the advantage of fluid editing; they can go back and fix posts whenever they want. I had to correct my Q post. I put costume for the dress of the Native American dancers I wrote about, and a Lakota friend kindly pointed out to me that I should have said outfit or regalia. It’s fixed now. Thanks, Istagi.

If a boo-boo gets into your book, there’s not a lot you can do but you’ll sure hear about it. I’m not talking about copy editors changing a word so the sentence doesn’t scan, but factual errors or terminology mistakes like mine. In a later edition, it might be corrected, especially if it’s a non-fiction book that is selling well. I don’t really know. Before you write something, it’s wise to check out your material.

I read a book not too long ago that had a great concept, but was riddled with factual errors, wrong words (affect for effect, sheesh) and outdated information. It read as if the writer had simply lifted all his material off the Internet without checking anything. I didn’t finish the book and gave it a firm thumbs-down in a written review. It pained me to do it, but I had to. I would get the same treatment if I released such a sloppy work and expected people to pay for it.

Do your research and you can avoid these mistakes. Double-check facts and techniques. This is especially important if you’re writing about law enforcement or something equally popular and frequently misstated. It may take extra time but the accuracy will pay off in the end. Your readers will not even notice that the story isn’t real, because it will feel real. And if your work is non-fiction, you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing they will have the best information you can give them.

Verbs tell us like it is! They tell us what’s happening, what the character is doing. How we use them makes the difference between exciting and boring, ho-hum writing.

What’s going on in this sentence?

The Joker was pummeled hard by Batman’s fist. The crimson paint of his smile was enhanced by the blood from his mouth.

If you said, “Those sentences are passive,” congratulations.

Who is doing something in this passage?

Batman’s fist, or rather, Batman, since he pummels the Joker. Joker just sits there and takes it. Batman is the subject of the sentence, and Joker the object. In passive construction, the subject of the sentence receives the action, instead of performing the action.

To keep the sentence from boring people to tears, you must remove the passive verbs and replace them with active verbs. Active verbs tell readers what happens. They have more flavor and color.

Using active verbs, the subject performs the action on the object, like this:

Batman acts upon Joker. He does something. The blood is the subject of the second sentence. It adds to the red paint Joker likes to wear on his mouth. The active sentences give a more dynamic feel to the passage, and we can see better what Batman is doing and how he does it.

Notice that the active construction takes fewer words. Hard is unnecessary, because pummeled tells us how Batman hit Joker. So is fist, since we know Batman pummels with his fists. Active verbs tend to be more descriptive.

It’s not bad to use passive language sometimes. It sounds more formal, for example, as in a police media liaison officer reading from a prepared statement.

The Joker was beaten by an unknown assailant. It is believed the Batman may be responsible.

Official police reports are almost always written in passive language. Besides formality, it maintains distance and a neutral tone. Also, they don’t know who beat the Joker, so an actor is not present in the sentence.

All the stolen jewels were dissolved. (By what? By who? Again, we don’t know.)

You can also use that construction to establish character. One Joker henchman telling another would probably not use the same language to describe the incident.

“Yeah, the Batman bashed his face in,” George said to Lenny. “And I heard he laughed the whole freakin’ time.”

George’s story is plain and simple, using active language because that’s how most people speak. He’s a down-to-earth character and doesn’t need to make a formal report.

A newscaster speaking of the same incident might use a bit of active language in his newscast:

“Sources say an unknown assailant beat the Joker badly. Police suspect the mysterious vigilante known as the Batman,” the handsome blond anchor said.

Or, he might not:

“Sources say the Joker was beaten badly by an unknown assailant. The mysterious vigilante known as the Batman is the police department’s prime suspect,” the handsome blond anchor said.

Which one sounds better? The active one does. Not only that, but it takes less time to say. I imagine news people wouldn’t want to have to rush through their copy. They make more mistakes that way.

You can find some resources about active and passive language at these websites: